Extend and Grow the Right Relationships: Introduction
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you'll be able to:
- Explain the key elements of the Altify relationship map methodology
- Describe how revenue teams build account relationships
Account Relationships
Managing your relationships in an account starts with understanding the people and the politics in the customer's business.
With this understanding, your revenue team can develop and maintain relationships with the right people: those who can help you achieve your revenue target. If your competitors do a better job of this than you, you’re likely to fall short of that target.
The right people to connect with in the account are those who influence buying decisions related to your offerings.
In any account, the business will typically look to these people for guidance on key questions such as:
- Which initiatives have the highest priority?
- Which vendor should we contact to help scope the next project?
- Should we expand the use of this solution to other regions?
- Should we renew the contract with this supplier?
- Do we take reference calls for this supplier, or partner together on case studies or co-marketing programs?
To meet your revenue goal, you may need to build, expand, or elevate your relationships with the people influencing these types of decisions.
An
- The relationships between those people.
- The politics that
- Your level of support and coverage with those people.
- The high-priority relationships you need to develop with them.
Each person on the map has a contact card. This makes it easy for the revenue team to see how everyone is connected, formally and informally, with
You can also see each person’s level of support for you and your coverage (level of contact) with them. We’ll look at this some more in a later unit in this module.
In this module, you'll see how an account executive and her revenue team use an
Meet Lynn and Her Customer, MyHealth
Lynn Benfield is an account executive at Retail POS, a company that specializes in advanced point-of-sale (POS) systems, including cash registers and card readers. They sell not only the hardware itself, but also POS software and related training and consultancy services.
Lynn is doing discovery on a new account called MyHealth, a chain of health-care clinics that provide pharmacy services.
From her experience with similar companies, Lynn's instinct is that she'll have opportunities to grow revenue in this account by selling POS hardware, software, and the training services that go with them.
But she doesn’t want to jump to conclusions. She and her team need to start building relationships at MyHealth and elevate them to the executive level. They also need to understand the full relationship landscape in the account to ensure that they know each of the key players who influence MyHealth’s investment decisions.
MyHealth's Key Players
Who are the key players in an account? Typically, they are the most important people in the company, which usually – but not always – relates to their level in the hierarchy.
Lynn and her team begin by considering the top executives in the business, and the people who are important to those executives. All of these people are key players.
Lynn will focus on developing relationships with the key players. This will help her to gain access and credibility with MyHealth's executive team.
She starts with the COO Susan Linton, the CCO David Harris-Jones, and the CTO Tom Perrin.
Toni Wise, the vice president of customer experience, is a key player who is in David's inner circle. David trusts Toni to define company goals and to decide on what should be prioritized. And because of her track record of success, Toni is often sought out for advice.
Phil King, the information security manager, is a key player in Tom's political structure. (People in a political structure people are those who 'make things happen' for inner-circle people and who are trusted by them.)
Who Influences the Key Players?
Lynn and her team also want to understand the informal influence that people have with the key players at MyHealth. People with informal influence (either positive or negative) can often play an important part in commercial decisions. So the team will capture those informal influence lines on the map.
One person with informal influence is Minerva Fields, the enablement manager.
Although her direct report is Liz Gabriel, the director of sales enablement, Minerva has successfully led several important projects sponsored by the CCO David Harris-Jones. As a result, David particularly values her opinion.
This could work in Lynn's favor because Minerva has a long professional history with Lynn going back to previous companies they worked for. Minerva trusts Lynn's advice on POS systems. She has shown Lynn that she actively supports her in the company. Lynn's path to David could include Minerva.
Lynn adds an influence line between Minerva and David on the map, and sets Minerva as a mentor (someone she expects will advocate for her within the business).
Another MyHealth contact whose influence may be important for future deals is Don Kellett, the digital procurement manager. His thinking counts for a lot with COO Susan Linton.
They have a long-standing working relationship, and Susan sees Don as someone who has a clear vision of what's good for the business. Susan is likely to be involved in future MyHealth initiatives, so Don will probably be an important player too.
Another possible source of influence is the data-operations specialist at MyHealth. This position is vacant at the moment, but whoever fills it will probably influence the thinking of key players the next time MyHealth goes in search of a software solution. For now, Lynn represents the position on the map using a placeholder.
What about people with negative influence? Lynn has heard that there's some interpersonal friction between Sophie Cooke and her department head, Susan Linton.
The friction might impair the way they work together and share information, so this is something that everyone on Lynn's team needs to be aware of and strategize for. For example, they may need to double-check that Sophie has shared with Susan all the information she receives in conversations with Retail POS, and vice versa.
Discover Other People
Lynn and her team know there may be additional people to consider. There's an external consultant who influences the CCO, for example.
They'll work to find out more about MyHealth's enablement team through their strong relationship with Minerva Fields.
They'll also try to deepen their understanding of MyHealth's operations team and technology team. These teams are likely to be important to any future opportunities that may arise at MyHealth.
The MyHealth Account Relationship Map
Lynn uses the map to assess her team’s relationships with the executives and their key players.
The map helps Lynn and the team to see and understand:
- Who influences whom, and what is the path to power for Lynn and the team.
- Whether her team’s relationships with MyHealth’s key players provide the access she needs to the executive team, and if they don't provide access what she needs to do differently.
- Who her supporters are, and who she can develop into a mentor.
- Who her enemies and nonsupporters are. (When Lynn and her team find they're struggling with a key player relationship, they may be able to leverage their mentors and supporters to resolve those difficulties.)
- What are the relationship gaps that need to be addressed? For example, Lynn can see on the MyHealth map that there's been no contact yet with Terry Whelks; the team will have to work on a strategy for developing a relationship with her.
